


Storm Study

by utsu



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Build, SuyaSaka and AbeMiha if you squint really flippin' hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2292029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tajima was Hanai's favorite subject. And his worst.</p><p>But he so liked to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storm Study

Hanai couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t _focus_.

He sat in his math class, staring down at the sheet of paper that would end up being a quarter of his grade and all he could see was a blur of lines intersecting each other. He blinked furiously, trying to get himself back on track, but it only took a few spare moments of false focus before he was right back where he started, curling his fingers into his palm and silently cursing the idiot plaguing his thoughts.

When was the last time he’d even talked to Tajima? Days ago. And yet instead of paying proper attention to the test on his desk, he sat picturing the precise way that Tajima’s hands curled around a bat. He curled his own digits in before flexing them out, looking down and studying each callus marring his hardened skin. There were so many that he’d lost a measure of flexibility in his throwing hand, though he’d never admit to it, most especially not to Tajima himself. Determined as he was to take back the position of clean-up hitter, he could work through that minor setback with ease.

Staring down at his open hand, he turned it this way and that, studied his long, thin fingers and mentally replaced them with Tajima’s. Where Hanai’s palm was like a bear’s, rough and wide like a padded claw, Tajima had lithe hands with supine fingers. Small palms marred with their own constellations of calluses and constantly caked with dirt, Tajima might as well have had the grip of a bat tattooed into his skin for how often he could be found holding one. For such a little guy he sure knew how to grip a bat and make it perform magic tricks over the big diamonds they played on.

Not that Tajima or his hands or the way Hanai’s were big enough to encompass the whole of Tajima’s was of _any_ importance at that exact moment, with Hanai’s math grade hanging in the balance. He bit his bottom lip and pushed the heel of the hand he’d been studying against his forehead, feeling the velvet of his shaved head as he well and truly focused on his exam. If he wanted to remain on the baseball team, he had to have passing grades. More than that, if he wanted to get into a good college for baseball—or whatever he would decide to do with his future, he wasn’t sure yet, didn’t have to be—he’d need good grades.

With that thought in mind, ever the encouragement to dig deep and give it his all, Hanai poured all of his focus and his knowledge into the test and deliberately ignored the way his heart was still pounding out a jagged rhythm at the thought of holding Tajima Yuuichirou’s hand.

✧

“So how’d you do on your math test?” Mizutani asks him the following day at practice, right in the middle of their stretches, loudly and right out in the open where he had no chance to hide. Everyone turns to listen for the answer, continuing with their stretches but wholly focused on him. Feeling his cheeks flush with the attention, he dips lower into his stretch, trying to make his nose touch the grass between his widespread legs but to no avail—he just wasn’t flexible enough to make it all the way. And besides, he wasn’t a nervous wreck like Mihashi; he didn’t need to bury his head in the sand when questioned, even if it had been staged like an attack.

“We had a math test?” Tajima piped in questioningly, with no hint of worry that he had basically admitted to missing a very important test. Mihashi blinked at him with his wide eyes and Abe grumbled something under his breath.

“There was,” Hanai finally said, looking down his nose at Tajima as he answered. “And I think I did well.”

He honestly wasn’t sure how he did but that was mostly because all he could remember from the previous day were thoughts of Tajima’s hands and how they’d feel wrapped up in his and even more, how they’d feel on other parts of his body. Flushing bright red, Hanai moved into the next stretch, signaling for the rest of the team to follow their captain’s lead. Tajima frowned, expression pinched for a few moments before he shot straight up, one finger raised in the air.

“Oh!” he blurted, “I do remember that test. It was so boring and I was so hungry. Luckily I had two bean buns in my bag.”

“You didn’t eat them while you were taking the test…” Mizutani asked, letting the sentence drag because they all knew the answer even before Tajima confirmed it. He glanced at Mizutani with a raised brow, curious.

“Of course I did! I was hungry.” And that was that, at least in Tajima’s world. He was hungry? He ate. He wanted to nap even if he was in class? He napped. He wanted to hit into the gap between shortstop and right field and wring a triple out of it? He got that triple. Hanai looked down to see one of his fists clenched tight enough to leave crescent indents on his palm that stayed even after he’d uncurled his fist. He ignored them.

“Anyways, why are we talking about tests at practice? I want to talk about the game tomorrow!” Tajima was practically dancing in his place, shimmying through his stretch and grinning so wide it was a wonder the corners of his lips didn’t reach his ears. Before anyone could even jump into the conversation with him, he turned to Mihashi and started mouthing off about all the feats he wanted to accomplish in the game the next day, and how he’d heard there was a monster on their team that he looked forward to seeing hit, and how Mihashi was certainly going to shut them down. Mihashi nodded his head and smiled and went with the jagged, fast-paced flow of Tajima’s conversation as the rest of the team split off into conversations of their own, creating a quiet, thrumming hum over the space between them.

Hanai remained silent, watching Tajima and Mihashi converse—really, just Tajima—and wondering how so much talent and passion resided in so small a body. It wasn’t just that Hanai was so tall or that he was so muscled, not really. Tajima’s frame was delicate, his limbs lithe and his shoulders thin. His neck looked so slender Hanai often feared any kind of injury might see it snap, reaching up unconsciously to palm the side of his own neck, a thick column compared to Tajima’s. There was a seventeen centimeter difference between his height and Tajima’s, he knew because he’d looked into it and that was nobody’s business but his own.

What would it feel like to have someone so small wrapped up in his arms? What would it feel like to have _Tajima_ wrapped up in his arms? Realizing that his thoughts were going into territory he absolutely could not imagine venturing into in public, at practice nonetheless, and that he’d been staring at Tajima the entire time and the clean-up had _noticed_ , Hanai abruptly switched stretches so that he was facing the other direction. He had one leg drawn up under his chest beneath him and the other stretched out behind him, testing his Achilles tendon without putting too much strain on it. It also put Tajima distinctly at his back and made it impossible for them to make eye contact for at least a few minutes as they switched back and forth between legs.

He could hear Mihashi mumbling something to Abe about his weight and the reward of a grunt from Abe that meant Mihashi was within his goal weight range and Abe wouldn’t have to reprimand him just yet. He could hear Nishihiro and Sakaeguchi discussing their own experiences with the dreaded math test from the day before and the questions they’d thought were acceptable and the ones that had blindsided them. Glancing to his right, he watched as Mizutani tried desperately to tickle Izumi mid-stretch, obviously wanting to destroy his perfect stretching form, and the way Izumi’s eyes threatened death should Mizutani’s finger make contact.

Momoe was heading over to them with that smile on her face that set chills down Hanai’s spine and made his breakfast roil in his gut, the smile that meant they were going to end practice with _sprints_. She folded her arms over her chest and paused in front of them, watching as they slowly moved out of their stretches and got to their feet. She glanced over all of them, meeting all of their eyes and making sure all conversations had silenced before she spoke.

“We’re going to do things a little differently today. Our opponent tomorrow has excellent hitting, so I want to focus on trying to strengthen our own in any way that we can for a while before we spread out into our positions. But instead of how we usually practice, I want to pair you off with the person closest to your batting average.”

Hanai felt like his heart had leapt up into his chest and he was choking on it. If they were pairing with whoever had the closest batting average, that meant he—and Tajima—paired—

“I’m sure you know who your partner is going to be beforehand, but just in case, Shinooka will read them off.” The girl in question walked up beside Momoe, clipboard in her tiny hands. Hanai knew before she even read them off that he was going to be pitted against— _paired with_ —Tajima, so he found himself drowning out her voice and focusing on her hands. They were small, even daintier than Tajima’s, with slender fingers and a tiny palm. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to hold her hand, to feel that absolutely miniscule hand within the confines of his own, but no matter how many different ways he pictured it, they all felt wrong. By the time she finished reading off the list and smiled shyly up at them, crossing her arms over the clipboard and pressing it against her chest, Hanai was scowling.

“Alright!” Momoe clapped, jostling them all into action. “There’s ten of you, so that’s five pairs. The first two pairs that were listed can head over to the infield and wait for me to explain what we’re doing.”

She turned to Mihashi, who was paired with Abe even though their batting averages weren’t the closest of the whole team but who were paired pretty obviously because they were a battery, and grinned.

“Mihashi and Abe are on a slightly different schedule, since Abe’s still recovering. So I want the last two pairs to head out to the outfield and play catch for a bit. Once I’m done explaining to the first two pairs what they’re to do, I’ll come give you your assignments. Then we’ll switch. Okay?”

They nodded, curious and expectant even as they ran out to their designated positions. Hanai felt dread seep through his gut like food past its expiration date.

✧

“Switch,” Momoe instructed, expression unchanging as Hanai straightened and prepared to relinquish the plate to Tajima once again, being forced to watch him hit every pitch right where Momoe instructed him to all over the field.

Frustrated, Hanai gripped the bill of his helmet hard enough that his fingers strained. He walked past Tajima without looking at him, not wanting to see pity or disappointment on his face. He wouldn’t have seen either, actually, just a look of confusion—as if Tajima knew that Hanai could hit better than this and was simply wondering what was going wrong. Tajima headed past him and for once he didn’t say anything, not even to offer one of his annoyingly positive encouragements or to passionately demand Hanai get his head screwed on right like he usually did. He simply took to the plate and fell into his perfect stance, hungry for the ball like he always was, greeting it with a smile, though Hanai did notice that this smile wasn’t showing teeth. It was a dimmed down, lesser version of his normal smile whenever he was at bat, and it looked all wrong sitting there on his face, like a stranger passing by.

Hanai stood behind him, behind the net placed behind the plate to catch any balls that they either missed or decided to let pass, and watched. Momoe threw ten pitches with incredible skill and Tajima hit every single one of them.

“Left! Center! Right! Left! Shortstop! Third!” Momoe called out each destination that she wanted the ball to find and Tajima’s bat sent them in kind, one after the next. The sound of the ball hitting the barrel of Tajima’s bat before flinging off to whatever destination he pulled it had Hanai’s heart racing in his chest, whether from adrenaline, envy, or simple excitement at hearing a well-hit ball, he wasn’t even sure. All he knew was that watching Tajima was both a reward and a punishment, because he hit the ball like a ball was meant to be hit, greeted it like a lover out at war coming home for respite and sending it away just as quickly with a loud, shrieking cry as the wood met the laces. Being able to stand so close to such flawless form, to see the mechanics of Tajima’s body as he swung up close and personal was a heady reward.

Like any excellent hitter, Tajima used his entire body to swing through the ball, allowing for him to use the full-extent of his power. His hands gripped the bat comfortably but with a firmness that was evident even from Hanai’s stance feet behind him. His stance was secure beneath him as he waited for the pitch to leave the glove; the signal that began the movement up and through Tajima’s entire body. The moment his eyes saw the ball in the pitcher’s hand, arcing up and over and heading right for him, Hanai watched his stride extend out quick and calculating and digging into the dirt to give him a more grounded stance even as he continued to move, his hands loading a little further backwards.

His back and his hips exploded into action the moment his eyes knew where the ball was coming, setting the pace and leading his power up and into his upper body. As his hips exploded towards the ball, his arms followed, jerking knob-first towards the ball while his hands maneuvered the bat’s trajectory. There was no tension in his arms, they were loose and freely giving into the extension needed for when the bat would come into contact with the ball. Everyone knew that being tense at the plate was bad news, but not everyone understood why.

Hanai knew, though. He knew that loose arms and perfectly flexed wrists throughout the extension phase of hitting were the perfect formula for lifting the ball into the air, adding that little bit of extra power that hitters like Hanai, who were already big and strong, needed in order to hit home runs. Hanai wasn’t certain whether or not Tajima understood the significance of being relaxed at the plate for optimum chances to lift the ball enough to get it into the outfield, or if he was simply relaxed up there because it was his favorite place in the universe to be. Regardless, as seemed to be the norm with Tajima, his form was perfectly relaxed and enabled maximum lifting power for when the ball would hit the barrel of his bat.

Hanai watched the pitch almost as if he was seeing it in slow motion, watched the ball race forward and make contact with the barrel of Tajima’s bat, his arms still relaxed but moving seamlessly into his extension arc and lifting the ball beautifully into the air. His extension was phenomenal, his shoulders perfectly aligned and his entire body turning into his follow-through. Hanai did not watch the ball fly, though he knew it was going to land gracefully in right field like Momoe had requested. Instead, he watched Tajima’s follow-through, one of the most underappreciated aspects of hitting, which served to prevent both immediate and future injuries. It allowed the muscles to literally follow through with the explosive swing rather than slamming to a stop and opening up the possibility of a tear. Put it all together with perfect finesse and you’d have Tajima’s swing, something like magic as his entire body worked to send the ball flying all in the span of seconds.

Hanai thought of perfect batting as a contained storm. The ball leaving the pitcher’s hand the first signs of rain before a torrential downpour, the whistling scream of it as it whirls towards the batter a streak of lightning through the sky, and the crack of the ball against the base of the bat the resulting thunder resounding and collating through the air, breaking off sound waves as it flies overhead and passes you by like just another insignificant thing. A homerun.

He’d always been afraid of storms, even as a teenager, especially as a child. The lightning was what frightened him the most, thousands of miles away and still bright enough to light the entire interior of his home enough to blind him, and then gone so quickly he couldn’t even study it to understand it. It would be gone and he wouldn’t ever have a handle on it, would never be able to put his hands on it and feel the intricacies of it, the burn, the shock. He knew it was a ridiculous notion, a child’s curious and untamed mind whirring on, but sometimes he remembered having those thoughts and he could feel how real his frustration was, could feel viscerally how badly he’d wanted to follow those lightning strikes home into the black sky and study how they’d ever learned to be so bright and powerful.

Sometimes he looked at Tajima and he remembered lightning; remembered what it was like to be worlds away from it but have it all around him, bright and powerful enough to light up the whole world.

Tajima stepped back from the plate and stared at him and Hanai, well.

He saw stars.

He walked around the net, empty, because Tajima would never let a ball with his name on it pass him, and headed over to the plate, intent on matching Tajima’s technique and doubling his power when the smaller boy stepped in front of him. Hanai could hear Momoe calling Nishihiro and Mizutani, who had been sharing their time at home plate, over to her at the mound before getting distracted at Tajima’s lax expression.

“Did you watch?” he suddenly asks in a tone that’s not accusatory but makes Hanai pay closer attention regardless. The words had been laced with a pointed sort of curiosity that rarely made an appearance through Tajima’s words. Hanai slowly nods his head.

“Yeah,” he shrugs halfheartedly. Of course he’d watched. That was what this entire exercise had been about: the two worst hitters paired with the two best, all of them watching the others’ better forms to study and improve. Suddenly remembering whom exactly he was talking to, Hanai realized that it wasn’t actually a certainty that Tajima understood the meaning of the exercise. Anything after the words, “batting practice” might well have been lost on Tajima, who was usually too excited at the prospect of hitting to pay attention to much else.

“Good,” Tajima says, grinning. This time the smile feels more real to Hanai. More fitting on Tajima’s face. His eyes have a hard edge to them that Hanai hasn’t seen in a long, long time, though, and he wonders what exactly is going on in that unimaginable mind of his.

Hanai moves to take a step forward just as Tajima steps out of his way, strangely in sync with one another. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the first time that Tajima and Hanai had seemed to be on the same wavelength for just a moment in time, though the occurrences were rare enough that they always seemed to make Hanai pause, wanting to study it. Tajima seemed oblivious, accepting it and moving on all at once, as if their bodies being perfectly in tune didn’t alter his thoughts or his feelings whatsoever.

Hanai took to the plate and fell into his own unique stance, fingers tightening on the grip of the bat but loosening almost instantly as he breathed out a deliberate sigh, actively feeling his muscles release their tension and relax. For a moment he could hear Tajima scuffling into place behind the net but he successfully tuned him out, trying to tune the whole world out so that it was just him, his bat, and the pitch. He could still hear miniscule distractions around him, though, the chirping of cicadas and birds, Abe’s frustrated growling from somewhere past left field, the sound of balls hitting mitts periodically throughout the outfield. He focused as best as he could on Momoe, on the way her hands settled behind her glove in front of her, the way her eyes gleamed in challenge.

“Left,” she chirped, unaffected by his previous at-bats, all of which had been subpar. He watched her arm fold, set, lift, and release and felt his body tense in anticipation of the ball hitting his bat, felt his body twist and turn and for a moment he thought he was an equally incredible ripple of explosions as Tajima had been, could hear the zinging scream of lightning as the ball sailed through the air, but he couldn’t find it ahead of him and he realized he had missed his chance to answer the lightning with his thunder. He had missed the moment of contact. The lightning, the ball sailing through the air, that was real and it was shame running hot and red down the back of his neck as he turned to see the ball hit the net behind him and roll down onto the dirt at Tajima’s feet, where he suddenly felt like he belonged.

Hanai wasn’t much for crying. He was much better suited and far more inclined to anger and all of its vices. He was also a man of ironclad control, held himself up to maintaining that, but Tajima always had a way of making him lose control. Whether he was stripping naked in public, in front of _children_ for heaven’s sake, or just making Hanai realize that in the face of Tajima and his baseball genius, Hanai was just an ordinary player, someone unworthy of standing so close to Tajima and his perfect batting average. But that wasn’t quite right, either, was it?

He was still learning how to pick himself back up and be the strength backing the team, something required and expected of the captain, but at least now after the Sakitama and Mihoshi games Momoe had taught him the valuable lesson that it was self-doubt that he was experiencing, and that it was crippling him.

He had been lost in a world of frustration, anger, and self-pity; not understanding what it was that was plaguing him in an ocean of negativity and uncertainty until he’d been able to give it a name. Once he’d named it, he’d realized that he could conquer it, own it, make it his own. He was still working on that, every day, trying to remind himself that being the best wasn’t important—but being the best _he could be_ , was everything. That pitting himself against Tajima wasn’t a lost cause, an impossible challenge, but an intense battle that he should welcome to help him grow, to help both of them grow. He was a good student—hell, he was a great student. He liked to study just about everything he came into contact with, critically and with an open mind. He liked to learn.

Tajima was Hanai’s favorite subject. And his worst.

But he so liked to learn.

He felt small hands hitch onto his waist, slide forward and position his hands on the bat a little more snugly against the knob. His heart beat in his throat and he glanced briefly over at Momoe to see her talking to an apologetic Shinooka, gesturing at her clipboard with a pen in her hand. Hanai’s heart was orchestrating a symphony made up of powerfully booming drums and clashing cymbals, a loud cacophony he could barely hear over as he felt Tajima’s hands on his body and of their own accord. Those hands, so small and warm, trailed over his arms and made sure his grip remained where Tajima had placed it. He dragged his hands down each of Hanai’s legs and positioned them in the batter’s box, ignoring the surprised and indignant demand that Hanai bit down at him for touching his legs so familiarly. Tajima ignored him, hands circling Hanai’s left ankle and positioning it just so, touch lasting a little longer than it needed to before he lifted himself back to a standing position, beaming up at Hanai.

“How does it feel?” he asked, raising his brows. Hanai could still feel the heat of those little hands all over his body, on his waist, over his arms, on his hands, down his legs, around his ankles, surrounding him, encompassing him, and he thought, _how do I explain what it feels like to be touched by a storm?_

“Good,” he answers breathily, flushing. He clears his throat and shifts the stance a margin, flexes his hands and lets them relax, making the stance his own even within the parameters of Tajima’s expertise. Tajima smiles up at him, hands resting on his own hips triumphantly.

“Remember, captain, when you’re in the box it’s just your bat and the ball. They were made for each other, precisely! So let them do the work. You just give them the push. Okay?” and then before Hanai could answer, Tajima was heading back behind the net and Shinooka wasn’t on the mound anymore and Momoe’s eyes were still in that challenging frame and everything was happening too quickly for him to keep up. He could still feel Tajima’s handprints on his body like brands, distracting him, bringing his temperature up a few degrees, making his throat constrict and his mind shift between hitting and touching and being in the moment and being _precise._

By the time Momoe threw the first pitch and called out, “center!” Hanai was still trying to get Tajima’s voice out of his ears. The ball whizzed by him and hit the net while he remained as still as a statue, utterly unmoving. Watching Momoe set herself up once more for the next pitch and saying _center_ once more, a challenge bitten out through her teeth, Hanai drowned out every single distraction around him until all he could hear was his heartbeat, the breath coming in and out of his lungs, the muted echo of Tajima’s thunder in his mind—until all he could feel was the relaxed state of his body, his arm muscles, the flawless twist of his hips and then a booming thunder that overshadowed the echo of Tajima’s thrice over. He watched as the ball flew straight over Momoe’s head, dead center and still going, the shadow of it flickering over second base and over Suyama as he caught a ball thrown by Sakaeguchi in center, all the way past the edge of the field in what every person on the field turned to recognize as a monstrous homerun.

The bat dropped right out of Hanai’s hands, thudding against home plate loud enough to make him shift his gaze from the distant point his ball had fallen to the bat that now laid bare across home plate. He could hear people cheering and whooping from the outfield, could hear Tajima clapping behind him. He could still feel Tajima’s hands on his ankle, positioning him, leading him. Something about it all coupled with his amazement and the liberating feeling of finally releasing all of his tension and hitting like he used to had him looking at that bat touching home plate and thinking that they now had something very important in common, he and the bat.

Once again they were finally, finally both at home in the batter’s box.

✧

Nishiura ended up winning their following game, though it was a close one. That monster of a hitter that Momoe and Tajima had been telling them about the previous week had been no joke: built like a bison with heavy muscles up top and finely tuned down low. He’d been powerful beyond their wildest imaginings and quicker than anyone had ever expected. With Mihashi and Abe’s skill, however, they’d managed to keep his power down to a minimum of damage. He managed a triple in the bottom of the sixth, but that was his only shining moment.

Tajima had taken his mere presence as a challenge and had played an excellent game, as per usual. His fielding was top-notch and his hitting was, again, as excellent as it always was. Two triples and several well-placed and timed singles that brought their boys home and led them straight to the top of the ninth with a two point lead.

Hanai had played well, too. But his hitting was still not what it used to be and it still wasn’t even a candle to the overwhelming wildfire of Tajima’s batting average. He just hadn’t mastered the extension as well as he needed to—was lifting the balls _too_ much and getting pop flies in return. Tajima had had nothing derisive or snarky to say in response to his outs, merely giving him a once over that held more speculation than Hanai had ever seen in Tajima’s eyes before. Usually when there was a fraction of that look in his eyes, he was studying an opponent he deemed worthy of an actual, all-out challenge.

Hanai was nowhere near that. Not yet.

Once he mastered his extension he would gladly challenge Tajima, though far less openly than the smaller of the two would challenge his opponent. He had a way of coming right up to them and declaring battle, unafraid and confident, hands pressed to his hips and smile stretched big and wide. Hanai was more for subtlety; he preferred to let his actions do all the talking, and then maybe glance over and see the effects on Tajima’s face.

Momoe had been exceptionally pleased with the fruits of their practices, especially, she said, the day prior, so she bought them pizza and promised that she wouldn’t make them do sprints for evening practice. Hanai was really hoping that she kept her word on that, since he ate four pieces of pizza before he realized she might’ve been misleading them and by then he was already too far gone to stop, so he ate two more.

Tajima on the other hand breathed through seven pieces and kept trying to look for more, even after he stole Hanai’s empty plate and licked the crumbs from it. Hanai wondered where all of the food the kid consumed went, since he was as lean and defined as ever, but then he pictured asking Tajima himself and getting what would without a doubt be a detailed account of him pooping. Hanai didn’t need that kind of imagery, especially not when he was debating another piece of pizza.

They ate like kings and sort of scattered around the living room and the kitchen, bellies full of food and throats full of groans. Mihashi and Abe were reclining side-by-side against the couch, hands touching as Abe slowly explained something to him. Slowly, because he’d eaten a magnificent number of slices and claimed it was because he was _recovering_ , which, Hanai would call hogwash if he hadn’t noticed Abe discreetly stretching his strained leg more often throughout their practices. So instead of laughing at him and calling his bluff, Hanai just shrugged and thought, _let the man have his pizza._

Izumi and Mizutani had eaten less than the rest, with the exclusion of Nishihiro who had only had one slice of pizza—Hanai literally needed to know what was wrong with that kid—and were busy playing Mario Kart 64. Tajima was in the refrigerator looking for juice of some kind and being really inconsiderately loud about it, since Sakaeguchi was currently napping on the kitchen counter, in full out food-coma style. Hanai had lost track of Oki but would’ve guessed a bathroom trip if he was pressed, and found himself lying on his back staring up at the ceiling of Mihashi’s living room, idly wondering how his body was going to digest so much food before practice later that night.

He didn’t know how long they all lazed about, not really contributing much to anything more than trying to breathe around extended bellies and playing video games and reading comic books—the latter of which Oki had apparently been doing before he’d gone to the bathroom to get another comic book. At least, that’s what he told them, anyway—but eventually someone mentioned the time and that if they wanted to get to practice a little early and walk off their food-induced exhaustion, now was the time. Suyama headed over to gently rub Sakaeguchi’s shoulder until he opened his eyes and blinked blearily up at the taller boy, smiling.

“Time already?” he yawned, stretching his back while still smiling at a now flushing Suyama. Hanai squinted at the two of them even though it was an uncomfortable angle for him to lift his head from his current position. Something about the way they were looking at each other, the subtle curve of Sakaeguchi’s smile and the flush to Suyama’s cheeks, Hanai found suspicious. Before he could analyze it further, Tajima was bounding into the room, completely energized at the mention of more baseball. 

“I’m ready! Let’s go!” he shouted, pointing at Mihashi and declaring, “First one to the door wins!” to which Mihashi squawked, scrambling up to his feet and chasing after Tajima down the hallway. Everyone else rose and left Mihashi’s house at an ordinary pace, some groaning and placing hands on their full stomachs while others slung hands over their companions’ shoulders. 

Hanai hung back and closed the door behind him, turning and walking stride-for-stride alongside Mizutani as he launched into a story he’d begun telling Hanai the day before. Something gossipy and detail-ridden and completely over Hanai’s head, so he just nodded and raised his brows whenever he thought he needed to, all the while watching his team walk ahead of him, with Tajima and Mihashi leading the pack.

His team.

✧ 

As it turned out, Momoe did keep her promise and removed the sprints from their practice regimen. Not that everything else they were still required to do was much of a reprieve, considering their extremely full bellies, but no one complained. Much.

By the time they’d finished the actual practice and were working on cleaning everything up, putting all of the gear and equipment away nice and neat and preparing to drag the infield, Momoe and Shiga sensei asked if they’d be okay being left alone for the end of the clean up. They didn’t explain it all too much, just mentioning something about individual adult duties they both needed to attend to, directing the question to the entire team before landing on Hanai. He glanced around at the nodding heads and the fingers lifted in gestures that meant it was fine and nodded to Momoe, bowing respectfully and wishing them both a good night.

“Take care!” everyone shouted after them, waving even as they continued to clean up. Hanai watched them leave, one hand reaching up to scratch absently at his ear before he turned back to his task. The sky was an overturned paint pallet; a combination of reds and pinks and purples and golds so deep they ran right through the mountaintops, making them glow. He took only a moment to appreciate the sight before bending down to pick up the last of the balls in right field, depositing them into one of the two buckets he’d lugged out with him. He crouched and grasped the handle to each bucket, lifting with his legs so as to not injure his back while picking up the heavy buckets. Most of the strain was on his shoulders, but it was bearable.

He headed in from right field, jostling the buckets on either side and rejecting Sakaeguchi’s concerned request to help him out, saying something about it not being too heavy. It was plenty heavy, but Hanai wanted to prove that he could do this simple task, one he knew that even Tajima wouldn’t have been able to do.

Or so he thought. And hoped.

By the time he got to the dugout and dropped the buckets down in their respective corner, his shoulders were aching. He rolled them once before putting the lids over the buckets and tucking them under the bench, making sure that they were completely hidden so no one would trip over them. Nodding at the completion of his task, Hanai rolled his shoulders again and stretched his arms a little, frowning.

“Hurt?” a voice blurted from behind him, simultaneously energetic and mildly concerned. He turned around to face Tajima, though he was a little hard to see since he wasn’t wearing his uniform top any longer, but just his black undershirt instead. The sun was almost completely hidden behind the mountains and the colors in the sky were gradually shifting to darker tones that made seeing a little more difficult. Still, it was more than obvious to Hanai who he was speaking to and now that his eyes had adjusted, how close Tajima was to him. His heart gave a disjointed stutter in his chest, which he pointedly ignored. 

“No,” he lied, “just a little sore.”

Tajima looked him over, his eyes intent. Hanai felt heat rising to his cheeks as the smaller boy moved around him. There was the sound of a light grunt, then cleats on a hard surface. Before Hanai could see what Tajima was up to behind him, he felt a pair of hands come down to rest on the tops of his shoulders. Surprised, he jumped beneath them but was too shocked to make his body step away, his mind a whirlwind of questions and confusion. Tajima’s hands began to slowly massage Hanai’s shoulders and the muscles leading up to his neck, and then his neck as well. His technique wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but Hanai couldn’t deny how good it felt. Which was exactly why he felt the need to complain about it.

“Do you even know what you’re doing? You’re going to make it worse!”

“I totally know what I’m doing! I’ve seen Abe do this hundreds of times for Mihashi.” He explained, and his fingers pressed in a little deeper when he came across a knot of tension in Hanai’s neck, his fingers relentless but so incredibly soothing. Hanai didn’t even want to think about Abe doing this sort of thing for Mihashi, not when he knew that there was something a little more intimate going on than just friendship, or even the bond of a battery, between them. Sometimes he’d look at them and feel like he was intruding—like they were so connected with each other that just by looking at them while they were having one of their painful-to-watch conversations or even just standing next to each other made him feel like he was a voyeur. His mind was having trouble making the connection between Abe giving Mihashi neck massages and how intimate that thought seemed and how Tajima was now giving _him_ a neck massage and did that make this intimate, too?

Cheeks getting even hotter, he continued to stand there feeling like a moron with Tajima’s deft hands on his shoulders, working magic and soothing his nerves. Instead of thinking about their predicament and what someone might think should they come close enough to make them out in the dark, Hanai focused on the realization that Tajima was willingly laying his hands on him.

He didn’t mean that as scandalously as it had come out. Honest!

But now that he was thinking about it in _that_ way, he could feel Tajima’s elastic belt sliding across his tailbone every now and again and he wondered if that was necessary. How close was Tajima standing? He was, at the moment, taller than Hanai because of his stance on the bench—and he probably loved every second of _that_ —so there was clearly room for him to bend his body away from Hanai’s, right? Wasn’t there a way that he could maybe _not_ come so close that he was almost rubbing his groin against Hanai’s backside?

Hanai truly didn’t think his face could get hotter than it was at that moment. Did he actually want Tajima to step back, to stop rubbing up so close to him? His mind was still a haze of confusion but if he was being completely honest with himself, he knew the answer to that question. He knew it by the way he didn’t step away at the first slide of Tajima’s hips against his tailbone, knew it because there wasn’t much he wouldn’t give to continue to have Tajima touching him like this, completely voluntarily, almost intimately, so close to being a tender gesture.

Hanai had not loved Tajima at first sight. It’d been more of love at first mention, at the sound of his name and his batting average. Hearing about his skill in the batter’s box and his equally impressive fielding at third base had set Hanai’s heart aflutter before he’d ever even seen or met the guy. But Hanai had experienced that feeling more than once before, and with much bigger and more impressive names. It’s actually how he had first realized that he wasn’t exactly straight. Not when he turned the Buffaloes’ game on and was more interested in the twist of Itoi Yoshio’s hips as he swung and smashed the ball into the back gap of left field and found his eyes sticking to his hips even after the next batter had come up to the plate.

When Hanai had first met Tajima in person and had seen him: short, energetic, _annoying_ , he had taken a moment to himself for some deep contemplation, questioning how wise it had been for him to put so much interest into a name and a legend before actually seeing the person in action. But then he’d seen Tajima hit, right there in front of him, had seen his form and his finesse and the way he hungered for the ball like no one had ever hungered for anything in the world—like just by being pitched to he was being sustained—and Hanai’s heart had been shocked into an entirely new rhythm that called out for Tajima in a way his heart had never called out for anyone before, and he knew.

He knew that regardless of how impossibly irritating and uncontrollable and _unpredictable_ the shorter guy was, Hanai was wrapped around his little finger. It hadn’t even taken long for that to happen, either. Weeks. Days. It was actually really embarrassing to think about, but it was true nonetheless.

Of course, that was usually when all of Hanai’s crippling self-doubt had come into play and he’d promised himself that there was no way he’d ever be good enough or interesting enough or good looking enough to appeal to someone as unreachable as Tajima. He’d struggled through trying to sort out his feelings between wanting to be Tajima and wanting to _belong_ to Tajima for years, watching him and feeling the familiar downward curve to his eyebrows that always appeared whenever he was concentrating. He knew now that it was impossible for him to ever become Tajima, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He had his own strengths that Tajima himself couldn’t mimic, like his height, for one. He also knew that yes, yes he would quite like to belong to Tajima, but that not all dreams come true, and he was pretty sure that that one was going to stay dormant for the rest of his life.

Tajima had never been quiet about what he found attractive. And other than baseball, food, naps, and masturbating, girls were Tajima’s next favorite subject. Hanai had had to sit through some very embarrassing talks with his team, even joined in a time or two because he couldn’t _not_ , and Tajima had made sure everyone knew that girls with short hair were his thing, and Hanai especially had cemented the notion in his mind, loud and clear.

That was what he always thought about whenever he wondered if Tajima might one day find him attractive. _Girls_ , he’d think, wanting to smack his own forehead. _He likes girls._ But then there were the days where Tajima’s eyes would find him in the locker room or the showers and linger a little longer than was socially acceptable, in places that definitely _weren’t_ socially acceptable to stare at, and the way his eyes flashed with pride whenever Hanai asserted his role as captain and commanded respect for their team or encouraged those who were feeling down, the way he would sidle up to Hanai’s side before they did their team cheer and ran out to their respective positions, his hips rubbing against the side of Hanai’s legs briefly before he was gone, just like that. There were a lot of things that Tajima did, actually, that made Hanai wonder about possibilities, but back then when they’d been first years he’d been far too unsure of himself to accept anything more than a vague and confusing sense of appreciation from Tajima’s looks.

Now, with three years of relative closeness between them, Hanai was comfortable with just taking what he was given and offering whatever he felt he could without imposing on Tajima in return. Hence his wary acceptance of this sudden neck and shoulder massage, which was, amazingly, still a thing that was definitely happening. Still, though, Hanai was the kind of person that kept himself from feeling too much of a good thing because he was often too embarrassed to. So instead of letting Tajima and his wonderful hands do whatever they wanted for however long, he found himself straightening from his comfortable slouch, glancing over his shoulder to see Tajima’s face a little dazed, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the back of Hanai’s neck.

“I think they’re better now,” he muttered, voice quiet just in case any of their teammates were lurking around while finishing up their duties. The field did have lighting, but it was poor lighting. Poor enough that if someone was on third base, Tajima and Hanai wouldn’t even be able to see them from their position in the dugout on the third base line. Hanai could still hear conversations from different angles and the distinct scraping sound of Mihashi raking the mound. However, Tajima had apparently not been able to hear Hanai even though he was right behind him. That, or he just blatantly ignored him, which was highly likely.

“Hanai,” he said, voice curious and with a telltale nuance that Hanai knew meant he was going to jump topics. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

Sputtering, Hanai tried to hide his face from Tajima’s view even as the shorter of the two peeked around his shoulder, eyes wide.

“Of course I have,” Hanai lied, crossing his arms over his chest and playing idly with the topmost button of his jersey. 

“Liar!” Tajima quipped, voice saccharine sweet.

“How would you know?”

“Because you always fidget when you lie. Like that!” and he took his right hand from Hanai’s shoulder and pointed to Hanai’s own fingers playing with his jersey’s button. He immediately tucked his hand under his other arm and pretended like he hadn’t been fidgeting in the first place; even going so far as to cast a glance over his shoulder at Tajima, looking at him like he was insane for even thinking Hanai would fidget. Or lie about having a girlfriend. 

“I do not,” he grumbled, pouting.

“You do. You fidgeted when Mizutani asked you if you’d ever done it with a girl before, too. And when Izumi said he’d seen you giving one of your sister’s a piggyback ride and you said that you hadn’t. And when—”

“Enough,” Hanai choked, blushing so badly even the tips of his ears were burning. Sometimes he forgot about Tajima’s rote memory skills—or maybe that wasn’t exactly right. There wasn’t really any time where it had escaped Hanai’s notice that when it came to baseball, Tajima’s mind was a steel trap where all information came to stay, regardless of how strange or seemingly useless it was. It had never occurred to Hanai, though, that Tajima had the capacity to use that memory for anything outside of baseball. Like, say, the moments where Hanai lied about something.

He wasn’t about to admit to Tajima of all people that when he lied he did in fact have a tell, because that would only make it easier for Tajima to tell when he was lying. Hence it being called _a tell_. He also wasn’t about to admit that those previous circumstances had truthfully been times where he’d made up lies to maintain his cool-guy image. He would probably die of embarrassment if he had to shed some light on that particular fact, and to _Tajima_ nonetheless.

“So you’ve never had a girlfriend,” Tajima continued, relentless. “And your type is English teachers. That’s so weirdly specific, Hanai!”

“Well yours is weirdly general!” 

“It’s simple.” Tajima says, his hands absently returning to their ministrations on Hanai’s shoulders. Hanai just doesn’t have it in him to tell him to stop.

“I like girls with short hair.”

“Yeah, yeah. We all know since you always bring it up.” Hanai tries not to let his frustration get the better of him, nor the jealousy. Instead, he rolls his shoulders under Tajima’s hands, trying to relieve even more of the tension that seemed to suddenly be building there, even under Tajima’s masterful hands. The movement seems to jar Tajima a bit, as his hands stop working Hanai’s shoulders and are removed completely. Hanai hears him hop off the bench and watches as he comes around in front of Hanai, once again shorter than him. He puts his hands on his hips, his telltale gesture.

“I like short hair in general.” He elaborates with what Hanai would’ve called a pointed edge to his words if it had been anyone else besides Tajima. He rolls his eyes before glancing over at Tajima once more, only to find him staring intently, so close to his face, too close, and Hanai suddenly can’t breathe.

“Okay?” he says, unsure of what is even happening at the moment. Tajima’s looking at him like he’s missed something, something important. Hanai goes over their conversation in his mind, goes over every word and tries to remember the inflections they’d been delivered in, but he comes up with nothing outstanding. After a long pause between them, with Tajima and his strangely serious, pointed stare and Hanai with an expression wiped clean of any and all understanding of what was even being said between the two of them, Tajima finally spoke.

“You’re smart but you’re really dumb.” 

“Excuse me? I’m not dumb!”

“Not school dumb, no. You get good marks. But in real life stuff, you’re kind of dumb, Hanai.”

Hanai pauses, pulling a face as he continues staring at Tajima, wondering if they were even speaking the same language. Sometimes Hanai was the only person on the team other than Mihashi who could understand what Tajima was really trying to say underneath all of his energetic babbling and the way he’d physically bound around while speaking. Other times, however, Hanai was as clueless as the rest of them, left in the aftermath of Tajima’s words with nothing to show for having heard them. This particular circumstance had left Hanai feeling like he was experiencing the latter. 

They stood staring at each other for a long moment, silent but contemplative. Finally, as he always seemed to, Tajima moved first by reaching out and taking Hanai’s hand, ignoring how Hanai halfheartedly tried to pull it back the moment he felt Tajima’s skin meet his. Hanai’s mind became a black hole; sucking every thought and instinct into nonexistence until all he could fathom was the feeling of his hand in Tajima’s and how his skin was clammy and sweating but Tajima was looking at him like he was _stars_.

Hanai can feel his skin heating with a reddened flush and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be looking at so he ends up looking anywhere but at Tajima until the shorter of the two lifts their hands up between them, interlocking their fingers and staring at the way their hands fit together. Hanai’s mind is still reeling from the contact but he has enough juice in him to wonder if Tajima likes what he sees, likes the way Hanai’s hand is big enough and his fingers long enough that they fully engulf Tajima’s. He has so many questions but he can’t find them, not when all of his focus is in his left hand, not when his mind is a void of nothing but the feeling of Tajima’s calluses rubbing against his own, of the way that Tajima keeps readjusting his hold on Hanai’s fingers, as if no matter how much he presses forward there’s still too much space between their palms.

Hanai isn’t sure how long they stand there in the shadows cast by the dugout before he realizes once again that they most certainly are not alone, that anyone could walk up to them and see what was happening and it could be Mizutani or God forbid, _Izumi_. He’s just preparing to rip his hand away and—actually, he isn’t really sure where to go from there, but he knows that his hand feels like it’s throbbing and he’s finally looking back at Tajima, staring at those big brown eyes gleaming in the offset lighting over the field and wondering if he was ever going to survive this kid.

“I like short hair.” 

“Yes.”

“You have a shaved head.”

“Yes.”

Hanai rolls his eyes at how obvious that was. Tajima might as well have said that he liked to hit fourth in the lineup for how obvious the fact of Hanai’s haircut was. He’s shaking his head and staring at Tajima with wide, vacuous eyes when suddenly, like the most infinitesimal weakness in the structure of a dam, the connection forms and every unimaginable notion that Tajima was so _subtly_ hinting at rushes forth.

Hanai goes from zero to sixty in a blink and finds that he left his ability to breathe back at the starting line. Tajima’s words and his insistent looks are like a bag of bricks straight to his guts, knocking the wind right out of him. He should’ve known something was off when Tajima played it subtle rather than straightforward—that was almost unheard of for the shorter boy.

“You _like_ me?” Hanai’s cheeks are so hot he thinks that had the sun been above them in the sky and not on its way to the other side of the world, it would’ve been envious. Somehow, in the way that some monumentally important life events are, it’s easy for him to realize that he’s _right_ even before Tajima ever answers him. Even still, he’s both parts confident and baffled and his heart pounds an unsteady rhythm in his chest while he tries to figure out how he knows and how it _happened_.

“Well, of course!” Tajima laughs, like it’s that easy—that obvious.

“ _Why_?”

“Lots of reasons,” Tajima shrugs, his grin turning mischievous. Everything about him is easy. “Besides the short hair.”

The entire situation is just too much for Hanai to take in without blushing, so he reaches up with his free hand to rub at the back of his head self-consciously, watching Tajima’s eyes as he traces the movement almost possessively. Hanai finds himself thanking his lucky stars that it was dark out, that they were standing on the side of the dugout where no one could easily see them, lit only by the moon coming over the mountains and the stars already speckling the sky. If someone were to approach them, they’d most likely be able to hear the footsteps; at least, that was what Hanai was telling himself. 

“I don’t…” _understand_ , he wants to say as he looks down into Tajima’s sparkling ocher eyes, searching them. He’s unabashedly looking for answers, for what exactly Tajima saw in him that made him _like_ him, made him want to hold his hand, to _touch_ him. Hanai knew his own feelings, had known them for a long time and had been struggling with denial. How long had Tajima been hiding his own feelings? Were they new? Were they as old as Hanai’s? Had Tajima been pining for Hanai even longer than Hanai had been pining for Tajima? And if he had, what had held Tajima—who was always, always, _always_ so honest and straightforward—back from telling Hanai outright how he felt? Hanai had so many questions and he was looking for all of them at the same time in the excited gleam of Tajima’s eyes, finding nothing but something that looked suspiciously like adulation. Hanai couldn’t believe it.

“Whenever someone calls you captain you smile when everyone turns away and it’s small and handsome. You’re tall and I hate that a lot. Big, too.”

“Big?” Hanai ignores the shake in his voice and the accompanying chill crawling up the back of his neck that Tajima’s comments had elicited. Tajima nods. Hanai’s just trying to keep up.

“You have muscles!” Tajima exclaims, frowning. But there’s a light, unbelievable blush on his cheeks that elicits the most conflicting feelings of wonder and exhilaration in Hanai he doesn’t even know what to call his current state.

“ _Nice_ muscles.” Tajima pouts. Hanai tries to breathe like the able-bodied teenager that he is, and struggles.

“And you love baseball and you love _hitting_ and you can throw super far! And your uniform and your shoulders and your _ass_ —“

“Stop,” Hanai wheezes, reaching out physically to grasp Tajima’s shoulder in his hand, ducking his head and trying to breathe through the sweltering heat of his face now that he was blushing from ears to collarbones, hotter than any summer he’d ever experienced. He glances back up to see Tajima cocking his head to the side curiously, still wearing that small smile, gentle and honest and too much for Hanai to ignore. He doesn’t even have control of the movement, not really—not when all he can see are Tajima’s lips curled up so cutely and his eyes so bright and his button nose and all he can hear is his voice in his head saying so many unbelievable _things_ —so when he leans forward and presses his lips against Tajima’s with the hand on his shoulder moving up to grasp onto Tajima’s hair, it _really_ isn’t his fault.

Tajima’s lips meet Hanai’s like they’re setting off an explosion only the two of them are swept up in. It’s implicit, silent, but all the same, when Hanai’s lips press to Tajima’s and the tips of their tongues touch for the briefest of moments, something inside them clicks and ignites.

Hanai had never kissed anyone before. He had _been_ kissed, but that wasn’t the same, not like this. He had always been a bystander to his own kisses, unsure of where to look or place his hands, what to do with his tongue and whether it was okay to bite a little. But this was like nothing he’d ever experienced before, not when he was the one who had initiated the interaction—not when he was the one whose hands came up to hold Tajima’s face in place as he sucked his lower lip into his mouth and listened to Tajima moan.

Tajima’s hands followed suit shortly thereafter, dragging over Hanai’s sides and up to his shoulder blades, pulling him in closer until their bodies were pressed together and Tajima sighed against his lips.

“Been waitin’ so long,” he laughed, startlingly quiet. “Knew you’d come around.”

Hanai swallowed, wanting to pull back and study Tajima’s expression but unwilling to leave the respite of Tajima’s lips just yet, not when they were wet and glossy and _his_. His mind was still spinning, no longer empty but rather overfilled, overwhelmed, all those questions rising up at once, a tidal wave in his mind.

The way that Tajima was responding, the words that he’d spoken, the look in his eyes when he’d been trying to get Hanai to understand his meaning—it’d all been too intense for this to be something new. Hanai was certain of it. So then, how long had it been? How long had Tajima been looking at him with eyes full of promises and a heart set on Hanai as its ambition?

Tajima was gently rubbing against Hanai’s groin with his own, standing on the tips of his toes in order to manage it, the motion equally as embarrassing as it was surprising to Hanai. Not the fact that Tajima would rub his erection against Hanai, that actually didn’t surprise him, but the fact that Tajima was being so _discreet_ about it. This entire night Tajima had been a conundrum, throwing off all of what Hanai expected from him and making him re-think the guy’s potential.

Tajima’s kiss was sloppy and aggressive but it was laced with the passion Hanai only saw in him when he was in the batter’s box, which somehow made him inexplicably more excited. He bit back a sharp groan, huffing out a breath when Tajima’s knee lifted and rubbed against his inner thigh, his eyes closed but his lips curled in a devious grin even as he continued to suck on Hanai’s upper lip. He bit down once, twice, licking the area to soothe the sting before coming right back to bite it again. Hanai’s heart felt like it was going to fly right out of his chest—out of the park—a homerun.

He pulled back, panting and staring down at Tajima in awe, still flushed and now with lips slightly swollen and there was a definite possibility that part of his lip was bleeding. Tajima groaned at his retreat, scowling up at him for the briefest of moments before his face broke out in his winning smile, his eyes crinkled shut. Hanai’s heart and mind and world had been rocked by Tajima so many times he wasn’t even sure he’d ever had a chance of surviving him. Even though he knew his feet were centered and squared on solid ground, even though he knew that the ground beneath his feet was level, every time he looked at Tajima he felt his body leaning towards him, like it was the natural order of things.

Even now, he wanted to slink forward and wrap his arms around him, press him close to his body and not think about a damn thing so that he could, for once, let himself _just feel_. But he could hear voices coming closer and the sound of laughter and cleats and he knew that their stolen moment here was over, that whatever this was and whatever either of them hoped it to be, at that exact moment, it was over.

Hanai removed his hands from the heat of Tajima’s cheeks, letting his hands fall heavily to his sides, glancing behind him to see if anyone was close enough to spot. He didn’t know what the future held in store for him, or for Tajima, or for the both of them together. He didn’t know if this was just Tajima acting on some random instinct or getting something out of his system. All he knew was that having his hands on Tajima’s skin felt like he had a cosmic force beneath his fingertips, and pressing his body close felt like the first day of Spring when every flower bloomed, and kissing Tajima felt like freedom—a great, big, indefinable unknown.

“We should get back to the guys,” He cleared his throat, bringing a fist up to cover his mouth and rub delicately at his lip—his lightly bleeding lip. Tajima smiled at him and Hanai couldn’t think for anything but that Tajima looked like poetry, which sounded so _stupid_ , but every bit of him was beautiful and profound even when he was as straightforward as words. It didn’t make sense, Hanai knew it well, but it was the best he could do—for the moment. Not that he would write poetry about Tajima, ever, but he did have a thing for organization, his thoughts included. Later, when his head was clear and his hands had stopped shaking and he’d put his heart back in the cage it had fluttered out of to escape to his throat, he’d put together a line that could describe every facet of Tajima without leaking through the cracks of his framework. Or at least he would try, until he got it right.

After a brief silence, Tajima nodded his head and watched as Hanai breezed past him, the lines of his back and shoulders tense though his head was held high. Tajima skipped to his side and laced his fingers through Hanai’s with the ease and precision he used to hit doubles down the baseline, and Hanai didn’t even flinch.

Hanai didn’t know what the future had in store for them. All he knew was that he didn’t want it—this sudden indescribable intimacy between them—to end. No, he thought, glancing over to Tajima as the shorter of the two intertwined their hands a little tighter and grinned up at him, utterly complacent.

He didn’t ever want it to end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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